Hello,

This may be. I had it freediving 15m in to much cold water
without a hood.

Cold temps and/or a tight fitting hood may induce vertigo.

Joerg

That is the likely cause of your vertigo, alternobaric vertigo.  I
occasionally get a bad hit of this.  Of course it doesn't matter
whether you're in the blue or on the wall.  My most recent case was
"ascending" from an 8-foot-deep dive in Palau's Mandarinfish Lake.
That ascent was so bad, I spent the next fifteen minutes vomiting, my
head spinning in the dark night as I tried to find the way back to the
channel where our boat was parked.

Alternobaric vertigo sucks worse when you're out in the blue with no
line, but it can happen any time your ears are submerged for a while.
My worst experience with it was out in the blue, ascending from
Alcione off Cocos Island.  No line, no reef, no other divers, just me
and my bubbles trying for as slow ascent as possible while my head was
spinning.  Closing my eyes made it worse.  Vomiting was so bad upon
surfacing that I ended up hyperventilating bad enough to cause
symptoms similar to DCS (hand muscle constriction, slurring of speech,
tingling), scaring me and the rest of the boat enough to put me on O2
and stay out of the water for the rest of the day until we confirmed I
wasn't bent.  It's much easier to control when you have a reference,
or better yet a line to hold onto.  Then you can try going a bit
deeper and re-equalizing to see if the condition improves, inching
back up slowly enough to keep it under control.

As far as I know, experience doesn't make a difference.  My first bout
was on my first post-certification dive off San Clemente Island in
Southern California, at night, when I had separated from the group
because I was low on air and needed to ascend.  It was especially
scary being my first time, not knowing what was happening, vomiting on
the long dark lonely swim back to the boat and for another half-hour
after I was back on board.  My last bout was well over five hundred
dives and almost nine years later, ending my 8-foot dive with the same
dark lonely swim back to the boat.  The only difference is that I
wasn't scared, merely annoyed, and I didn't make my condition known to
the rest of the group because I didn't want to scare anyone else.

On the other hand, it sounds like the original poster's girlfriend's
condition is more psychological than physiological in nature.  Some
people get vertigo when exposed to wide open spaces, sort of an
agoraphobia.  It's probably difficult to simulate on land, so she
didn't know she had it until she tried her first blue-water dives.
Skydiving would probably evoke the same response, so I don't recommend
her taking up that hobby, and she'll never make a good astronaut.
That said, it certainly may be something she could learn to overcome
with time, taking baby steps along the way.  Definitely avoid diving
in blue water without a line until she gets it under control as it can
be very difficult getting one's bearings with no reference but
spinning bubbles and your head is spinning too much to focus on your
gauges.  While the physiological vertigo does not go away when you
close your eyes, her vertigo might.  If you do happen to be making a
blue water ascent, you could hold her and control the ascent for her
while she keeps her eyes closed.  Of course if you happen to get
separated, that won't work, so it's probably not the best idea to plan
for such a dive.

There's probably not much a doc can do for her condition.  There's not
much a doc can do for my condition.  You live with it or you don't
dive.  In her case, hypnosis or some sort of guided imagery with a
psychologist could possibly help, but it may be easier to work it out
on her own or avoid those types of dives where a blue-water ascent is
necessary.  And yes, it's possible the condition might just go away
with time and experience.  I wish mine would.  Post-dive nausea and
vomiting can take a lot of the fun out of an otherwise great dive.

Hey reading from overhere in denmark,

Yup me too. That is to say, I thought it was narcosis previously, but
now on my CCR can have extended stays at say 40m without any vertigo,
but sometimes during ascent at shallower depths I can get extreme
vertigo for a short while. I've bailed out on my CCR from this a
couple of times to be on the safe side.

I now find that the narcosis is not the issue but something with the
middle-ears when ascending. Not pleasant, but now way more manegable
as I know whats happening, and that it will pass.

Nicolai

I couldn't agree more. The only time I got vertigo was in Stoney Cove, U.K.,
it was a drysuit dive, and very cold.  To start with, my air line blew off
about 10 metres down and I was losing all my air so I had to ascend and fix
it.  but when I re-descended, I found the environment cold, dark, and
turbid.  Even though I had a buddy, I could see nothing around me and I
began to feel weird, having no orientation at all.  Then I saw a fish about
a foot long swimming past me, and I was OK from then on. However I really
didn't enjoy that dive.

If I can see a fish or something alive swimming past, I just feel so much
better. Stick with things you can see, it helps to orientate you.

Or, better still, stick to warm, sunny countries such as Belize where you
can see down to about 50 metres, it's so sunny.

I don't think your girlfriend is at all unusual, I think she's probably
pretty normal.

someone